One of the things I’ll ask a new student to do for me on their first lesson is simply to play me something on their guitar. It doesn’t really matter what they play; I’m interested mainly in how they play. I can usually assess how to fine-tune my lesson plan for that student within the first minute or two of their performance.

Some of what I’m looking for is note awareness or their facility with chords or scales, but more importantly I’m looking carefully at their sense of rhythm, and their picking technique. It’s here where most bad habits are revealed.

Most guitar players have heard of alternate picking, but a haphazard approach to this technique is common, and can often do more damage than good.

I’ll try to present what I believe is a sound methodical approach to alternate picking, especially as it applies to syncopation. This should not be confused with sweep or economy picking techniques–also valid strategies that I will not be addressing in this article.

The basic concept is this: to alternate down strokes and upstrokes with the pick.

Be careful to always alternate down and up, even when you’re picking across strings, as in the case of this two-octave major scale:

It’s always a good idea to practice a new technique slowly with a metronome, to remain relaxed and to focus carefully on each movement to make sure you’re not inadvertently picking two down-strokes or up-strokes in a row–a common error when crossing over to the next string. Major, minor, pentatonic and blues scales are all good scales to begin practicing this technique with. Use the forearm instead of the wrist to generate movement and use the weight of the arm to generate a solid tone while remaining relaxed. The pick should be perpendicular to the strings so that the down and upstrokes sound as much like each other as possible.

Here’s an E blues scale with tab for positioning and picking:

When it comes to syncopation (when notes not on the downbeat are accented) the strategy is to continue the down and up alternate motion, according to the smallest rhythmic subdivision (in this case 16th notes) as if you were playing every possible 16th note in the measure:

In this example the tied notes (the ones with the down or upstrokes in parenthesis) now become phantom strokes that don’t actually occur.

This keeps movement and execution fluid, and keeps the brain from trying to second-guess each next move (once you get used to it). A common mistake is to try and exactly alternate pick strokes for each note regardless of rhythm during syncopated sections, which will upset the even rhythmic flow of the passage and create unnecessary tension. Think of the pick as a flywheel in constant motion that only strikes the string when it needs to.

Here is an example of a syncopated melody, the smallest rhythmic subdivision being 16th notes, and the correct picking for that passage:

The same technique is used for strumming, only the motion is much wider, covering most or all of the six strings of the guitar. The note heads that look like x’s are when the pick strikes the strings when they are muted. The bottom stave shows the same strum pattern without the “scratches” (both examples in Fig.6 are typical funk strumming strategies):

Then there are tuplets and odd time signatures. Notes aren’t always in groups of even numbers, and in the next two examples you will not always have the down-strokes fall on the downbeat, as with previous examples:

Here the triplet is the smallest rhythmic subdivision, and that’s how you alternate. On beat 4 the middle triplet is gone and the last note is played with an up-stroke (as if there were an 8th note triplet in the middle of that beat).

In Fig. 8, the time signature is 5/8, with 8th notes the smallest rhythmic subdivision:

The oddly metered measure means that a down-stroke will hit on the downbeat only every other measure.

This is just a beginning discussion of this technique, but definitely enough to get started with. Try taking a piece of music you already know how to play, slow it down and analyze how you pick that piece. Try to redesign the picking for that piece as logically as possible and begin to re-learn it. After awhile the logic becomes apparent and passages practiced this way will sound fluid and confident.